Eschenmoser Albert

Deceased Members II. Department of Mathematical, Physical and Chemical Sciences
Eschenmoser Albert

Date of birth:

  • 1925

Place of birth:

  • Erstfeld, Switzerland

Deceased:

July 14, 2023

Eschenmoser Albert

Deceased Members II. Department of Mathematical, Physical and Chemical Sciences

Academic titles:

  • professor emeritus
  • Doctor of Science

Membership in the Academy:

  • corresponding member – Department of Mathematical, Physical and Chemical Sciences (6/12/1994 – 07/14/2023)

Curriculum Vitae

Albert Eschenmoser, a Swiss chemist, was born on August 5, 1925 in Erstfelf, Switzerland, graduating from St. Gallen and graduating from the Federal Technical College (ETH) in Zuerich as a student of the Croatian Nobel laureate Lavoslav Ružička. He became an assistant professor there in 1956, in 1960 an associate, and in 1965 he became a full professor of organic chemistry. He worked at ETH until his retirement in 2009.

In his research in organic and bioorganic chemistry, Eschenmoser has made contributions to theory of terpene biosynthesis, structure elucidation of natural products, stereochemistry and mechanism of organochemical and biochemical reactions, development of new methods for organic synthesis, total synthesis of complex natural products and etiology of nucleic acid structure. In early scientific papers, he processed catalytic cyclizations of aliphatic proteins, but he is best known for the successes of the synthesis of alkaloid colchicin, which led to two different synthesiss of vitamin B12, in collaboration with American Nobel Laureate Robert Burns Woodward. He also dealt with the participation of ribose in biological evolution.

Eschenmoser is a member of the German Academy Leopoldina (Halle), Academia Europaea (UK) and the Pontifical Academy (Vatican), a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston), the National Academy of Sciences (Washington), the Royal Society (UK), the Academy of Science in Göttingen, the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Zagreb), the orden Pour le mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste (Berlin), and the österreichisches Ehrenzeichen für Wissenschaft und Kunst (Wien), he is a honorary member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (London), Gesellschaft österreichischer Chemiker (Wien), the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan, and the Swiss Chemical Society. He holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Fribourg, Chicago, Edinburgh, Bologna, Frankfurt, Strasbourg, Harvard, Innsbruck, and from The Scripps Research Institute. He is recipient of numerous academic awards.

He was elected as a correspondent member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1994.